Tuesday, June 20, 2006

"Analog Devices Inc. revealed the completion of the acquisition of certain intellectual property assets of TTPCom Limited as it met all closing conditions. As per the agreement terms, TTPCom transferred intellectual property, engineering resources, and related assets to Analog Devices. The agreement also provides development rights for AJAR, TTPCom's advanced applications platform to Analog Devices. The IP transfer is valued at approximately $23 million, the company said."

"Individuals and companies involved in trade have to know as much as possible about the conditions of trade. It is therefore fundamentally important that regulations and policies are transparent. In the WTO, this is achieved in two ways: governments have to inform the WTO and fellow-members of specific measures, policies or laws through regular “notifications”; and the WTO conducts regular reviews of individual countries’ trade policies — the trade policy reviews. These reviews are part of the Uruguay Round agreement, but they began several years before the round ended — they were an early result of the negotiations. Participants agreed to set up the reviews at the December 1988 ministerial meeting that was intended to be the midway assessment of the Uruguay Round. The first review took place the following year. Initially they operated under GATT and, like GATT, they focused on goods trade. With the creation of the WTO in 1995, their scope was extended, like the WTO, to include services and intellectual property."

"Mobile measurement firm M:Metrics has responded to the filing of a lawsuit against it by Telephia, Inc, last week, calling its case ‘totally without merit’. Telephia alleges patent infringement in connection with the development and distribution of smartphone metering software. Telephia filed the suit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California claiming M:Metrics had violated its intellectual property rights. The software in question is distributed via www.mobilepanel.com and the complaint is based upon multiple patents awarded to Telephia in the area of metering mobile devices. They include US Patents #6,745,011 B1 – ‘System and Method for Measuring Wireless Device and Network Usage and Performance Metrics’ and #6,754,470 B2 – ‘System and Method for Measuring Wireless Device and Network Usage and Performance Metrics’, both issued in June 2004."